Thesh wrote:Centrally planned? You realize there are co-ops all over the country, thousands in Europe, right? You are acting like this is some new concept.

But those co-ops have to make a profit in order to pay their workers/owners. Who pays the entrepreneur's wage while the co-op is starting up, before they've made any money? I think Tyndmyr has assumed the community would be paying those wages, but now it seems you're saying that's not the case.

Thesh wrote:So, every single business in the United States is a command economy. Gotcha.

That's overbroad, although many companies do have some element of central planning. McDonalds does not set all pricing, for instance. For corporate stores, they do, but for franchise stores(the vast majority), they do not. Franchises have a *lot* of standardization, but they generally do not have centrally planned pricing and labor.

Thesh wrote:They put together a business proposal, go to the bank, get a loan, and pay all employees, including themselves, from the loan until they have customers.

Sure, but that loan is still on them, right? If their business goes belly-up, they pay it back? Can't really be called a wage if you have to pay it back at the end of the day. That's why I figured the community was picking up the slack there... Am I missing something?

Thesh wrote:Literally, you called a single business with a single employee a command economy. If that's a command economy, literally every business in the United States is a command economy.

A single business with a single employee, sure(outside of haggling cultures, which use different pricing methodologies. Nevertheless, that largely doesn't include the US.). At some point, all prices are set by somebody.

It's a matter of scale. Consider the minimum wage in the US. That is an example of price fixing, though it's somewhat limited in nature. It only sets a lower bar, and in practice, most people do not make minimum wage, so it wouldn't be correct to call the US as a whole a command economy. However, if the US government(or a branch of it) determined the wages different professions were to be paid and set prices for all the various goods and services, it would be.

Largely, difficulties crop up at scale because not every subset of the economy is equal. Look at McDonalds, they manage to generally charge more in airports than they do at other locations. Each store owner is determining what works best for his local market. Someone attempting to manage the entire national market would have difficulty finding all of those individual optimums, and attempting to set one standard for the nation would be suboptimal in many markets.

Like, just fuck this shit. It's quite obvious you were just trolling, looking for things so you can say "AHA! GOTCHA!", not actually trying to think of how it will work. So yeah, go away.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think that capitalism is superior to socialism in general, but I'm genuinely trying to understand what it is you are proposing. It's easier to discuss differences of opinion once you understand what those differences are.

Right now, I'm still a bit confused about the precise compensation model, but I do think that if a fellow has taken out a loan to start a business, put effort into building it, and then his employees can vote him out and keep the business without recompense, he's gotten a raw deal.

If he is instead being paid by the cooperative(and the cooperative takes the risks) at every step of the way, that doesn't apply. At that point, he's basically an employee. However, the central pricing issues above do come into play. Probably not a big deal with a small cooperative with one or two businesses. The difference between that and another business is negligible. If the scale of the system increases to where the price-setters need to understand many markets, it'll hit them.

Cooperative: Essentially a normal company, but owned by the workers.Community: The people who decide which cooperatives get loans of money/land/etc from the pooled wealth.

Do I have that right?

So if a cooperative fails, the community has lost money, not the individual. I think you said before they take on all the risk - don't think I internalized that until now.

This does seem at least a little bit centrally planned. The community has all the power when it comes to who gets funds and land. If someone wants to start a coop in that community, they must go to them. If I'm happily running my sex shop, and someone else wants to open a competing sex shop, would the community fund them? Why should they do that when my sex shop business is already humming along, supplying the needs of the people?

The community is simply the potential customer and employee base (this can mean a lot of things, e.g. the town you live in, or the star trek community). Banks and insurance companies take on the risk itself. Generally speaking you will borrow and invest within your community, but it's not part of the law and you can go to anyone who will give you money. In this case, we are talking about a worker cooperative, but consumer cooperatives can be started the same way - only difference is that he customers are members and not the workers.

In general it's the community who loses the most anyway. The business owners are only usually taking on the risk for the profits - the community is taking on the risk that they will lose that part of the economy, as well as the wages. Detroit is a good example of a community who took on all of the risk, but are owed none of the profits.

Cooperative: Essentially a normal company, but owned by the workers.Community: The people who decide which cooperatives get loans of money/land/etc from the pooled wealth.

Do I have that right?

My experience with co-ops is that generally, you buy in with a share, and they hold some kind of periodic voting for a sub-group of people who runs things, and they also periodically distribute profit to the shares. Kind of like a corporation and a board. Can be nigh-identical in some cases, but specific setups vary. Some existing for housing areas, and shares also come with some kind of rental arrangement. Kind of like a HoA+ when applied to housing.

There are also communes, which is like a shared property living thing. No one person owns that garden plot or the products of it. The group of people that make up the commune owns all of the property roughly equally as a group. Often you get nothing for leaving the commune, and joining may come with giving up personal property you own at present. Heavy associations with cults and abuse, at least in the US. Also, potentially, hippies. Not all stereotypes may be true for a given commune.

I'm thinking this is some sort of meta-system that exists between both of them, kind of. One giant commune with a bunch of co-ops within it, sort of. I'm still working out the exact details of money and decision-making, but it seems roughly like that. Presumably the organization would own some quantity of land, and need sufficient investment capital to get housing and shops going, and would select it's decision-makers by some kind of vote. I'm not yet sure how personal finances would work, but private property seems to be mostly out, but people would apparently still have currency, and the organization would have currency flow around internally. That's my impression so far, might not be perfectly accurate.

Thesh wrote:The business owners are only usually taking on the risk for the profits - the community is taking on the risk that they will lose that part of the economy, as well as the wages.

Generally speaking, business risk is losing your investment. Time and money put in to make it happen.

The community can be at risk when a business comes in, depending on exact economic model. This is *mostly* true for corporations large enough to convince the community to make up part of the initial investment. However, generally, new businesses do not usually represent a risk for the community. If the business fails, the community is no worse off than before, but if successful, they have additional jobs and services.

Detroit, I think, didn't take on risk in that fashion, exactly. Yes, they are in a tough spot now, but it is not from taking a chance on too many different businesses starting up. The reverse, if anything.

Thesh wrote:That capitalism is only concerned with the risk to the people who can most handle the risk is not a valid argument. It's simply a flaw in how we model economics.

That's not really how risk is determined. A business owner who puts everything he owns into his business is risking quite a lot. The employee who shows up for a paycheck is risking little. The employee is risking however many hours he puts in before he gets paid. If he's shorted, well, that's a loss on his part, certainly, but that is generally fairly small in comparison to the business owner. The local government usually puts in nothing at all, and thus, risks comparatively little by having a business start. It is in their interest, therefore, to encourage as many businesses as possible.

It is true that all three do benefit if a business works out, but while the gains are distributed to all, the risks are primarily upon the business starter. It's all about who put in what. Whatever they put in, that is what is risked.

Now, your proposition apparently transfers the risk from the business starter to the cooperative, in addition to transferring the potential gains. The business starter's position, then, appears to be that of an employee. The cooperative's ruling body, whatever that may be, is the economic entity making most decisions. The chap who is engaged with the shop is just drawing an hourly salary, and doesn't have any particular pricing power, or direct profit from the shop he's in. Basically, the ruling body is the owner(s).

The biggest flaw of Western civilization is the insistence that everything be narrowly defined. Everyone knows what risk is; it doesn't need to be defined, and your definition is a narrow definition that does not actually capture all of the potential people who may be take financial loss. What if an employee quits their job, goes to a startup company, invests a year in training, then the business goes under and they spend the next year unemployed? That's a ton of wealth that you are just flat-out ignoring because it doesn't fit the definition of risk that you want.

Thesh wrote:The biggest flaw of Western civilization is the insistence that everything be narrowly defined. Everyone knows what risk is; it doesn't need to be defined, and your definition is a narrow definition that does not actually capture all of the potential people who may be take financial loss. What if an employee quits their job, goes to another company, invests a year in training, then the business goes under and they spend the next year unemployed? That's a ton of wealth that you are just flat-out ignoring because it doesn't fit the definition of risk that you want.

That person invested a year of effort into training, and thus, that's their risk. At least, if they invested in the training, anyways. This is particularly relevant for college degrees, in which a lot of time and money are gambled. That's probably the biggest gamble many people take nowadays.

If the company paid for the training, then it's the company's risk. Maybe slightly shared if they convinced the worker to take a lower wage for the duration, but generally speaking, getting paid for taking training is a benefit, not a risk.

It is important for the sake of consistency that risk be defined as inputs, not potential outputs. If one buys a lottery ticket for a dollar, and does not win the jackpot, one has lost only a dollar, not the million he would get if he were lucky.

The risk is what you consider when you make a decision to start a business. In capitalism, you don't consider externalities. In socialism you do. Your definition of risk is capitalist-centric, and not very useful for the sake of economic planning within a socialist economy, only personal financial planning.

...which is why unrestrained capitalism is bad. But there is a community that creates laws which businesses must follow, and those lawmakers are charged with considering externalities when they formulate those laws. When they don't, that's the failure of the community, not of capitalism.

Yes, sometimes the failure is pretty big. Facebook is a perfect example. They became big (and may well become world-dominating) by convincing people to give up their personal information before people realized what was up, and now it's too late. The loss of privacy is a huge externality. Facebook profited off of our ignorance and docility, and is incentivized to keep us ignorant and docile. Laws may be passed now, but they will only make Facebook immune to competition. We are all owned by the board of Facebook.

Under a socialist system, the same thing would happen, but it would be the community board that would own us, because our information also has political value, and a community board is nothing if not a political entity. It wouldn't be money, but power, that would be the driving force. And maybe you couldn't call it an "externality" in that case, but we'd arrive at the same place.

Jose

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Thesh wrote:The risk is what you consider when you make a decision to start a business. In capitalism, you don't consider externalities. In socialism you do. Your definition of risk is capitalist-centric, and not very useful for the sake of economic planning within a socialist economy, only personal financial planning.

What externalities are considered by your cooperative proposition that are not considered by a business owner?

Thesh wrote:Again, please learn about socialism before commenting about socialism. You don't know what you are talking about.

He's not wrong in that any sort of elected board or what not would be a political entity. Everything from the school board to HOA leadership can end up politicized. If you've got elections, you've got politics.

Unless, of course, you're using some other methodology to run your cooperative. I'd presumed some manner of voting was behind it, given your posts, but if that's incorrect, let me know.

Chen wrote:

Thesh wrote:No, the loan is taken against the cooperative, not the employees. I mean, they can take on some of the risk if they want, but they don't have to.

Who pays back the bank should the business go belly-up? The community? This is the part I’m not following.

It appears to be the cooperative. Looks like, save for wages, they're taking all the risks, holding all ownership and reaping all the profits. Essentially, the cooperative is a business running a number of small enterprises, and errybody in this community is working for the cooperative. Presumably the bank is external to this system? Either way, the risk will eventually fall to the cooperative.

A group of 3 people decide to form a coop to sell widgets. The three people go to a bank and ask for a loan to start up the company, procure inventory and pay themselves a wage. The bank gives them $1 million.

They go into business as a cooperative and start making Widgets. They pay themselves for 2 months but no one is buying widgets and the business goes under. The bank wants its $1 million back. Who owes this?

Well, he has the cooperative layer above the business layer. I'm not sure how one enters and leaves the cooperative, or how finances work in regards to that. Presumably everyone owns a share in the sense of voting, but I'm not sure how the cooperative guarantees loans, covers losses if failures mount, or gets seed money.

Thesh wrote:What happens when any other organization can't pay back it's debt?

For small businesses, whoever signed as the responsible party(s) guaranteeing the debt pay it back or go bankrupt. Loans may also be secured in other ways, such as mortgages, in which case the securing property is forfeit.

In short, unless the cooperative is taking that hit, those folks are going to lose their personal income and assets.

Oh, hey, the troll is being deliberately dense again. Lots of organizations don't have personal liability. Co-ops, LLCs, NPOs. You just chose to only consider the one type of business model that makes your point (the one least close to a co-op). One that is a minority in the US. Like, seriously, you are just like ucim - the only thing you are doing is looking for a gotcha. It's stupid and childish

Thesh wrote:Oh, hey, the troll is being deliberately dense again. Lots of organizations don't have personal liability. Co-ops, LLCs, NPOs. You just chose to only consider the one type of business model that makes your point (the one least close to a co-op). One that is a minority in the US. Like, seriously, you are just like ucim - the only thing you are doing is looking for a gotcha. It's stupid and childish

Dude, I've run an LLC for about five years now, and I'm currently running two. I do this on a commercial basis.

People aren't going to throw giant unsecured loans at you just because you filed LLC paperwork. You want to sign a commercial lease or get a loan as a brand new business, someone needs to put their name on the dotted line. In some cases, you may have your loan partially secured by the SBA, but that's actually not all that common, and in any case, you're on the hook for the rest.

Liability shielding is handy in case your company gets sued, but it's not a get out of jail free card for all debt.

Thesh wrote:Nice anecdote. Completely irrelevant to the question at hand, just an assertion without evidence that no one will lend to a business without someone taking personal liability. Go back to troll school.

Look, if you can create an LLC for a few bucks and about a page of paperwork, get thousands of dollars, spend it, and never pay it back, don't you think people would do that?

Or hey, don't take my word for it, go see the SBA's fact sheet. They walk you through the application process a bit. Note the security information.

If you are an extremely large business, with tons of assets backing you, this isn't the same, but as a startup business, it's absolutely the case.

Thesh wrote:Ah, so "What if someone takes out a loan against an organization without the intention of paying it back?" It's called fraud, dumbass. It happens today, and it's still against the law.

Intent, whatever. Banks have no desire to lose money regardless of intent.

If you have so much money you do not need more, they will be thrilled to loan it to you. Otherwise they'll want assurances of getting it back. Your car loan is secured by your car, and if there's a gap, they're gonna hit you up for that. Home loan, secured by home. Credit card, Business or personal loans, secured by you. Go forth and look at loan applications.

If you have them, yes. If you put a lot of personal resources into the business, then it may have adequate resources to handle the loan repayment.

But if you sign or cosign on the loan, then your personal assets also secure it. If you do not have large amounts of assets, as is normal for startup businesses, this is required.

Sole proprietorships, partnerships, same same. Everyone signing is personally liable. In some cases, their spouses may also be personally liable.

So, regardless of if you put a bunch of assets in the business name to guarantee it, or guarantee via signing, you are risking wealth in starting a business. If this is something you are interested in changing with your coop model, cool. However, you'll need to figure out where the necessary wealth comes from instead.

So now socialism doesn't have wealth? Seriously, nothings changing here. People will loan out money because it pays back interest, and in socialism most of the money is in banks, not direct investment, so there is a hell of a lot more money to loan (also at 0% real interest, there is no artificial scarcity of money, anyway). People will also loan out money to their communities because it will benefit their communities.

Again, you aren't thinking about how a socialist economy would work, you are looking for reasons why a socialist economy wouldn't work. If you can't understand these concepts, it's on you to learn it, not everyone else to explain every little detail in which you think you have a gotcha. So, please, STOP RESPONDING. Stop polluting this forum with your nonsense. Let people who actually want to discuss these things have uninterrupted debates.

Thesh wrote:So now socialism doesn't have wealth? Seriously, nothings changing here. People will loan out money because it pays back interest, and in socialism most of the money is in banks, not direct investment, so there is a hell of a lot more money to loan (also at 0% real interest, there is no artificial scarcity of money, anyway). People will also loan out money to their communities because it will benefit their communities.

Why is most of the money in banks in socialism? That's a really big assumption.

And if there isn't scarcity, it isn't money. It's literally part of the definition.

Again, you aren't thinking about how a socialist economy would work, you are looking for reasons why a socialist economy wouldn't work. If you can't understand these concepts, it's on you to learn it, not everyone else to explain every little detail in which you think you have a gotcha. So, please, STOP RESPONDING. Stop polluting this forum with your nonsense. Let people who actually want to discuss these things have uninterrupted debates.

If an idea can't survive someone even thinking about problems with it, it's not much of an idea.

You've stated, many times, that you have superior knowledge to those responding. The only evidence you have given for this has been links to wikipedia. The evidence against includes a lack of knowledge of a wide range of basic financial concepts. I'm not gonna tell you that you can't post because you're ignorant. I am going to say that your assumption of superior knowledge is grating, and if anything's getting in the way of a conversation, it's that.

Tyndmyr wrote:Why is most of the money in banks in socialism? That's a really big assumption.

If there's money, where else you going to put it?

Tyndmyr wrote:And if there isn't scarcity, it isn't money. It's literally part of the definition.

I said artificial scarcity.

Tyndmyr wrote:If an idea can't survive someone even thinking about problems with it, it's not much of an idea.

You aren't thinking about the problems, which is my point. You are looking for things to say it doesn't work, and they are minor things that there are countless solutions for, but you aren't asking "how could we solve this problem" you are asking "is there a gotcha here?".

Tyndmyr wrote:You've stated, many times, that you have superior knowledge to those responding. The only evidence you have given for this has been links to wikipedia. The evidence against includes a lack of knowledge of a wide range of basic financial concepts. I'm not gonna tell you that you can't post because you're ignorant. I am going to say that your assumption of superior knowledge is grating, and if anything's getting in the way of a conversation, it's that.

I mean, you spent half this thread trying to get a definition for socialism. So either you are trolling, or you need to start learning what socialism is.

Like, how much do you want me to explain? When will you stop asking gotcha questions? Do I need to write a book that describes in detail every single aspect of the economy, as well as write the laws that this economy would be based on, or what not before you will stop asking stupid questions?

Thesh, where would one start to educate themselves. I know you have your other posts so I may sift through there as well time permitted (I have read some of it already).

One question I have is, in your economic model; what drive's innovation and change? Who decides to reallocate resources from already existing demands to pursue these things?

I suspect this isn't much different than how things are currently done - but this might be because I'm framing it in my mind in the context that a group of people would gather and determine collectively if the potential for new innovation and change out weighs the diversion of resources from existing needs. The crux here being that you are consciously deciding to disadvantage someone right now - with the idea that in the future they would be better off. Does that make sense?

Tyndmyr wrote:Why is most of the money in banks in socialism? That's a really big assumption.

If there's money, where else you going to put it?

Money is traditionally distributed throughout the economy, at least if we're talking about M0. M1/M2 is different, but are largely electronic in nature, and anyways, deposits are sort of a loose constraint on loans under the modern banking system.

You seem to believe that banks will have more money under socialism, and thus will be able to lend more out, but you haven't explained the first assumption, and the link between the first and second is tenuous.

Tyndmyr wrote:And if there isn't scarcity, it isn't money. It's literally part of the definition.

I said artificial scarcity.

It's fiat money. Any level is artificial. Unless you're using gold or something, it requires setting an arbitrary level of scarcity.

In any case, printing a lot more won't increase the value out there. It'll just cause inflation.

Tyndmyr wrote:If an idea can't survive someone even thinking about problems with it, it's not much of an idea.

You aren't thinking about the problems, which is my point. You are looking for things to say it doesn't work, and they are minor things that there are countless solutions for, but you aren't asking "how could we solve this problem" you are asking "is there a gotcha here?".

I'm not obligated to believe in a system to discuss it, nor to do your research for you, or fix it's problems for you. If you want to persuade people that it is in fact desirable, demonstrating how it is desirable would be advantageous.

Tyndmyr wrote:You've stated, many times, that you have superior knowledge to those responding. The only evidence you have given for this has been links to wikipedia. The evidence against includes a lack of knowledge of a wide range of basic financial concepts. I'm not gonna tell you that you can't post because you're ignorant. I am going to say that your assumption of superior knowledge is grating, and if anything's getting in the way of a conversation, it's that.

I mean, you spent half this thread trying to get a definition for socialism. So either you are trolling, or you need to start learning what socialism is.

Like, how much do you want me to explain? When will you stop asking gotcha questions? Do I need to write a book that describes in detail every single aspect of the economy, as well as write the laws that this economy would be based on, or what not before you will stop asking stupid questions?

That's because you insisted that the USSR was capitalist, not socialist. If you use non standard definitions, you need to define your language, rather than assuming everyone is speaking the same language as you. Look, have you ever talked to men's rights advocates? It's similar. They use a lot of invented lingo, including a lot of overloaded words with special meaning only to them. Often instead of using perfectly reasonable, clear language that already exists. And of course, they do this in order to pretend themselves clever, and endlessly bash anyone who disagrees with them. After a few such experiences, one concludes that while, in theory it might be possible to have a reasoned debate with someone holding such ideals, in practice it's nigh impossible because they have made it so.

For an economic model, one would want to talk about how decisions get made. How money flows. Highlight how your system changes things. Not merely the end result, mind, explain how it gets there. Saying that a system would make everyone happier is all well and good, but if you don't show your work, why should anyone agree?

trpmb6 wrote:One question I have is, in your economic model; what drive's innovation and change? Who decides to reallocate resources from already existing demands to pursue these things?

Well, first off, in my experience as a programmer the vast majority of innovation is shower thoughts done by people solving problems that they come across in their job. They never think "What's it worth to solve this problem?" they just... solve it. Most of the patent trolls are going after this type of innovation. It's also my experience in a capitalist economy that unless the government throws massive amounts of money at it, then it doesn't happen - the people who benefit also look to solve those problems. The crowdsource model shows that even with this high level of inequality, people will organize and work together to get the things that they want.

Tyndmyr wrote:It's fiat money. Any level is artificial. Unless you're using gold or something, it requires setting an arbitrary level of scarcity.

If real interests rates are above zero, it means there is more demand for money than money available. If it's below zero, it means there is more money than demand for money, and if it's zero it means that the money supply raises to meet demand and you can't profit off of it. Profits off of property imply artificial scarcity.

Tyndmyr wrote:In any case, printing a lot more won't increase the value out there. It'll just cause inflation.

That's what the inflation hawks always say. It never works out that way.

Thesh wrote:People will loan out money because it pays back interest, and in socialism most of the money is in banks, not direct investment, so there is a hell of a lot more money to loan (also at 0% real interest, there is no artificial scarcity of money, anyway).

Okay, trying to understand this here.

- Individuals put their money in banks, presumably because it pays some interest. - The bank lends that money to cooperatives expecting to make more interest so the bank can turn a profit (the cooperative pays back the loan plus interest from their profits). - If the cooperative fails, the bank gets the money back from the cooperative's assets. If the cooperative doesn't have enough assets (which is very likely in the case of a start-up) they get that money from... who?

You said "banks and insurance companies take on the risk itself" (presumably insurance the bank is paying for?), which I think means they get the money from no one, right? The bank just eats the loss, or their insurance does. Seems to me, that just means they'll just need to charge higher interest rates to make sure they get their money back. You also said that "[the entrepreneur] can take on some of the risk if they want, but they don't have to", so if a bank wanted to charge a lower interest rate on the condition that you cosign against your personal wealth, that be allowed, right?

I think I might not be understanding the fundamental difference between what you're describing here and capitalism. Seems like there are two main differences:1) All businesses must be cooperatives, owned equally by the workers.2) All land is owned by "the community" and is rented rather than owned by businesses and private citizens.

Could you define what role the community plays in this system, apart from land ownership/taxation through rent? Are they the lawmakers as well? What levels of government exist in this system, and is there a level of government above the banks?

I was under the impression that you were thinking this system was meant to address some injustice; I'd been presuming that was wealth inequality. Is that the goal?

If so, I don't really see how that is addressed, exactly. Seems to me that a successful company will be making more money, therefore their workers will be making more money. Let that simmer for a century or so, and I imagine you could end up with great inequality, especially if individuals are not taxed directly, but are allowed to have personal wealth (just no land).

Tyndmyr wrote:It's fiat money. Any level is artificial. Unless you're using gold or something, it requires setting an arbitrary level of scarcity.

If real interests rates are above zero, it means there is more demand for money than money available. If it's below zero, it means there is more money than demand for money, and if it's zero it means that the money supply raises to meet demand and you can't profit off of it. Profits off of property imply artificial scarcity.

Alright, so you want to peg the monetary supply such that interest rates are always zero.

How does one profitably run a bank in this scenario, and why should anyone wish to save money, or loan it to another?

Tyndmyr wrote:In any case, printing a lot more won't increase the value out there. It'll just cause inflation.

That's what the inflation hawks always say. It never works out that way.

Venezuela begs to differ. So...is it your position that more money can simply be printed without limit to solve financial problems?